Martin Bryant

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Martin John Bryant (born 7 May 1967) murdered 35 people and injured 37 others in the Port Arthur Massacre, a killing spree in Tasmania in 1996. He is currently serving 35 life sentences in Hobart's Risdon Prison after pleading guilty.

[edit] Childhood

Martin Bryant is the elder of two children of Maurice and Carleen Bryant. Bryant was regarded as unusual in his childhood and in the early years of his schooling was diagnosed as having an IQ of 66 (which is considered to indicate mental disability) and put into special education classes. He was described by teachers at Marcellin College as unusually detached from reality and as either unemotional or as expressing inappropriate emotions. He was apparently a disruptive and sometimes violent child, and was severely bullied by other children. Bryant was referred for psychiatric treatment several times during his childhood. Reports from child guidance centres stated that he tortured animals and bullied his sister. In 1984 a psychological evaluation described him as mentally retarded and stated that he had a personality disorder.

[edit] Adulthood

A long haired Martin Bryant

Descriptions of Bryant's behaviour as a young man show that he continued to be disturbed. When his father, who had taken early retirement to care for him, died in an apparent suicide, ambulance officers described Bryant as quite excited by the search and unconcerned about the death.

Bryant was eligible for a disability pension due to his low IQ and lived on a pension for some years. He took on odd jobs as a handyman and gardener. One of these odd jobs led to him meeting Helen Harvey, heiress to a share in the Tattersall's Lottery fortune. Harvey befriended Bryant, inviting him to live with her. She was reported to spend large amounts of money on him. Harvey and Bryant moved together to Copping, where they lived until her death in a traffic accident.

Bryant was named the sole beneficiary of Harvey's will and came into possession of a mansion in Hobart and other assets totalling more than half a million dollars. In 1993 his mother applied for and was granted a guardianship order placing Bryant's assets under the management of trustees. The order was based on evidence of Bryant's diminished intellectual capacity.

Bryant travelled extensively both in Australia and internationally during this period, apparently seeking social contact with other travellers, but was frustrated at people's negative reactions to him.

Bryant had few friends. One of his few ex-girlfriends described how she was horrified by Bryant's obsession with the movie trilogy Child's Play. This kind of fear held by friends and girlfriends was reported in a number of psychiatric reports throughout his adulthood. After the offence, their recollections provided some indication of Bryant's mindset at the time of the Port Arthur Massacre. Shortly after the April 1996 massacre Bryant was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Although this diagnosis does not directly explain his violence it is thought the isolation Bryant experienced as a result of the Asperger's may have been a contributing factor.

[edit] Port Arthur Massacre and aftermath

Main article: Port Arthur Massacre

Port Arthur Bay

Bryant has provided conflicting and confused accounts of what led him to kill 35 people at the Port Arthur site on 28 April 1996. It appears his desire for attention (He allegedly told a next door neighbour "I'll do something that will make everyone remember me"), as well as mounting frustration at his social isolation, had made him unbearably angry. The possible trigger for the massacre, according to a psychiatric report cited by News Limited, was being prevented from selling home-made trinkets outside the Broad Arrow Cafe, when he was 9 years old.

His first victims, David and Sally Martin, who owned a guesthouse in the area, had apparently angered him by buying a guesthouse he wanted to buy. He shot them in the guesthouse before travelling to the Port Arthur ruins and opening fire on visitors. After he killed most of his victims at the site itself and the remainder during his escape, he returned to the guesthouse where police, unaware that the Martins were already dead, assumed that he had them as hostages and besieged the guesthouse. One potential victim was spared because when Bryant pointed the gun at him, their eyes met and Bryant immediately recognised him as someone he'd been acquainted with before and seemingly decided to let him live before moving on to continue the killings.

After 18 hours, Bryant set fire to the guesthouse and attempted to escape in the confusion. He suffered burns to one side of his body, was captured and taken to Royal Hobart Hospital where he was treated for the burns and kept under heavy guard.

As a response to the spree killing, the Howard government banned semi-automatic centerfire rifles, high-capacity repeating shotguns and high-capacity rifle magazines. In addition to this, heavy limitations were also put into place on low-capacity repeating shotguns and rimfire semi-automatic rifles. The Tasmanian state government attempted to ignore this directive but was threatened with a number of penalties from the federal government. Though this resulted in stirring controversy, most Government opposition to the new laws was silenced by media opinion and mounting public opinion in the wake of the shootings (see Gun politics in Australia for more information on the 1996 legislation).

[edit] Trial and imprisonment

Despite his mental dysfunction, Bryant was judged as fit to stand trial and a trial was scheduled to begin 7 November 1996, but Bryant, persuaded by his court-appointed lawyer, pleaded guilty to murder. As he admitted the crimes, Bryant laughed hysterically.^{[citation needed]}

Two weeks later, Hobart Supreme Court Judge William Cox sentenced Bryant to life imprisonment and recommended that he should remain in prison until he dies.

He has attempted suicide 5 times while being imprisoned. For the first eight months of his imprisonment, he was held in a purpose-built special suicide prevention cell, in almost complete solitary confinement. He is still being held in protective custody for his own safety, a decade after his conviction. Recent reports from visitors have described Bryant as an 'overweight, shambolic wreck'.

On Monday November 13, 2006, Bryant was moved into Hobart's Wilfred Lopes Centre, a secure mental health unit run by the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services. The 35-bed unit for inmates with serious mental illness is staffed inside with doctors, nurses and other support workers. Inmates are not locked down and can come and go from their cells. Exterior security at the facility is provided by a three-wall perimeter patrolled by private contract guards.[1].

[edit] Media coverage

Newspaper coverage immediately after the massacre raised questions into journalistic practices. Photographs of Martin Bryant had been digitally manipulated with the effect of making Bryant appear deranged. There were also questions as to how the photographs had been obtained. The Tasmanian Director of Public Prosecutors warned the media that the reporting compromised a fair trial and writs were issued against the Hobart Mercury (which used Bryant’s picture under the headline “This is the man”), The Australian, The Age and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation over their coverage. The Australian Press Council chair, David Flint, argued that because Australian newspapers regularly ignored contempt-of-court provisions, this showed that the law, not the newspapers, needed to change. Flint suggested that such a change in the law would not necessarily lead to trial by media. [2]

[edit] References

• Patrick Bellamy, The Port Arthur Massacre: A Killer Among Us, Court TV's Crime Library, [3]
• "Managing Martin: the Jailing of Martin Bryant", Radio National, March 16, 1997.
• Mike Bingham, Suddenly One Sunday (ISBN 0-7322-6899-0)
• Joe Vialls, Deadly Deception at Port Arthur